Ever been unable to put the baggage down and walk away? Yeah, you're not alone. So whaddya do when you can't let go? Seems the solution must lie in forgiviness and acceptence with forgetfulness being an unreliable ally. Anybody have any moving-on advice?
All the time. Sometimes you just have to sit there and give yourself a really really good internal shake. My life would have gone a lot better at times if I had just let crap go and walked away.
Best friend in high school fucked my then-girlfriend before I did, then they both kept it from me for 6 months before he decided to confess. At first, being an idealistic 70s teen, I said it doesn't matter, bros before hos. I eventually woke up, and haven't spoken to him in 20 years. I don't go to reunions just to avoid him. He keeps trying to connect on Facebook and I ignore him. It ain't something I plan on "moving past." That whole relationship with that girl, in fact, was fucked up, but it was my first actual GF and I held on with teenage desperation. Pretty sure it fucked me up for years afterward, so I wish I'd never met the bitch. But you live with the scars and move on. About 10 years ago, Mary and I had a huge fight with someone who'd been close friends with us for 20 years (30 for Mary!), over something his wife did. He got all indignant and hurled insults at Mary. She basically disowned him. She flat-out refuses to make up, and so does he. This is one thing I wish had never happened, and I've basically learned to live with it. I miss our friend. It doesn't help that they live three houses away and I see them on the road, in their yard, etc, all the time. Oh well, oobla-dee,oobla0dah. Sometime in the early 80s we lived in a 4-apartment house, and the woman in apartment one was so freaking cute I couldn't stand it. Really pretty girl-next-door blue-eyed blonde. Her husband was an up and coming local politician and was never home. She was lonesome. One day I helped her shovel her car out of the snow, and she invited me in for a beer. Just me. OMG,the pure temptation. I politely declined and went inside and hugged Mary. But lemme tell ya, that girl's face still pops up in my lizard brain every once in a while and I get a little knot in my tummy. Did the right thing, but... ouch. Still haven't gotten over that one.
Yah I recently told a good friend of ours to get lost too. Got tired of having my husband used (and she was telling everyone that she was sleeping with him, why I'm not sure. Maybe she felt it made her look cool) but I don't see that as 'not letting go', see it as letting go of extra drama and man our lives have been much simpler since. There are things I've done that look bad and think WOW - was a total fucktard and stupid idiot. But its not like you can undo the past.
If there's one thing I have learned on the subject over the past few decades, it is this: The difficulty of letting go of something is inversely proportional to the importance I attach to my own person. If I think the universe revolves around me, then any slightest offense becomes A Huge Big Unforgivable Deal. OTOH, if I realize that there is no particular reason I should have less problems than anyone else, that others have a right to behavior that does not suit me as long as it is not actually wrong, and that caring about others is more important than caring about myself, I find it much easier to move on even when I still think I was in the right. So, yeah, I've had it happen that something really bothered me (about ten years ago, a close friend and co-worker not only turned against me, as well as against a mutual friend and co-worker, he embarked on a letter-writing campaign to destroy us professionally and turn as many people against us as he could--he totally failed, because he was known not to be credible, but it still was something I never expected from one of my closest friends and could not approve at all), but the way I deal with it is by reminding myself I am not the center of the universe. Just because someone's behavior bothers me does not mean they didn't have the right to behave that way, and even if they didn't have the right to behave that way, well, it happens. Lots of people in this world are going through incomparably worse things. It usually takes a while, though... Don't know if any of that is useful to you or not in your situation, but that's what's useful to me.
There was one incident in my teens where it would be nice to have time machine just so I could go back and stop myself from doing something really dumb. It took me a long time to get over the fallout from that incident, being young and stupid. These days, I really don't dwell on things anymore. I think it's a combination of maturity (debatable!) and coming to terms with the fact that, in the grand scheme of the universe, nothing really matters anyway. But to evenflow's point, drinking helps.
[action=Asyncritus]notes that some dentists probably ought to be avoided, no matter how much it hurts. [/action]
All the time at the airport. In situations like these, I try to fill my life with fun things and things I like as much as possible. Partly it distracts my mind but it also improves my mood. This includes talking with and hanging out with friends and family, playing video games or watching movies, going on trips and vacations, and of course reducing my sobriety level. Be careful with alcohol though, it's a depressant and has the potential to make you feel worse about your situation. Everything in moderation.
There is a person currently in my life that is exactly like this, and I'm doing my best to get them out of my life while causing the least amount of fallout possible. If I told the person to simply fuck off they would cause a scorched-earth campaign to stir up as much drama and shit as possible that would take months, if not years, to rectify. I don't want this person to go away mad, I just want them to go away.
I definitely won't "get over" how the photography staff in my newsroom has been continually fucked over for the last eight years. It affects us all every day because there simply aren't enough of us to adequately cover the news here now, yet we're expected to carry on like we have a full staff. I hope terrible, terrible things happen to the people who screwed us.
I was a short kid in gradeschool and was bullied a bit. I would love to go back in time, with a little extra courage and punch a few people in the face. Just something I think about that I know will never happen. Not sure how I would react if I saw a few of those bully assholes. They would probably act like they were my good friend back in the days. One wrong comment might set me off. Ahh, that's kid stuff. Get over it, right. But for some reason I can't. I fantasize about revenge. Most likely it will never happen. I did run into one guy once. He didn't recognize me but I just walked past him. My motto...Living well is the best revenge. Some people would be in therapy over stuff like this. Letting it fuck up their head for years. I mostly joke about it. I mean really...how do I look taking revenge for some shit from 7th grade?? Otherwise, life is good. I just move forward.
....hm, nobody that I want to go back and kill. All of those people went on to have stupid, boring, awful, mediocre and meaningless lives. ...now people I'd like to go back and FUCK, that's another story...
A friend from high school and his wife friended me on facebook. She was prone to spamming political stuff constantly and one day she posted a petition supporting the Occupiers. Because of here, I tend to check out things like that before signing or discarding them and I did some research. Turns out, it was a phishing scam collecting names, addresses (physical and e-mail) and I told her so. She flipped out, calling me names and tossing accusations. I tried explaining how I could tell it was garbage. She became livid and defriended me. She got him to defriend me as well, without a word and never responded to any attempt to contact him. This bothered me because he was my friend from HS and I don't even know her at all. Normally, I don't let petty shit like this bother me, but in this case, two months later he was hit by a train and killed, so it can never be resolved, ever and the whole thing is so completely stupid it burns. I figure I will get over it eventually, but right now it still gets to me, but then it only happened in April.
There's people I've got a few choice words for, but it's unlikely I'll ever see them again so it's no big deal. I just tell myself that the past is the past, and I can't do anything about it. I also know that anyone who bullied me probably had something wrong in their own life and probably needed an outlet. Might be best that they picked on me, who could take it, rather than on someone who would get them in serious trouble or someone who'd be forever scarred by it.
The problem is it's "shitting where you live." It would be too easy for this woman or her husband to spill the beans and thus fuck up your marriage. You did the right thing - now if you had been visiting or vacationing somewhere far away and there was zero chance of this coming back to haunt you? I would personally buy you a shredder for your Man Card. Like Mewa, I was bullied but I did indeed punch people/fight a lot. Once I got to High School I was still bullied but could not fight back because I wasn't popular. If you're not popular the school will take the popular bullies word as to who started the fight. Fucking politics! But he is right - living well is the best revenge. I take pride in knowing that statistically I am healthier, leaner and stronger than most if not all of those bullies and could beat the living dog piss out of them if given a chance one-on-one, regardless of weight class.
No offense, but you could have avoided that whole thing by never using Facebook. See... this is why Facebook will be the downfall of humanity, and why we must kill Mark Zuckerberg and nuke the entire Facebook complex from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
I was a long time getting over the psychobitch ex. Came down to Kass yelling at me and one of those "moments of perfect clarity" you sometimes get. Now, the circumstances under which I left my previous job (it's actually more complicated than that, but I'm simplifying) I don't think I'll ever get over. Basically, I spent ten years making my government supervisors look good - helping them win awards and everything - and when I needed them to help me in return, they not only declined to do anything but also lied to my face. Should I ever meet one of them again, I might not be able to restrain myself. And of course, I don't think I'll ever get over the death of my wife this past January.
Welcome to the civil service. If you think politicians are lying, cover-their-ass douchebags, civil servants make them look like saints. Sorry about your wife.
That's essentially what happened with our friend down the street. His wife was driving us nuts - bipolar, needy, clingy, whiny, an emotional wreck. My wife kinda had enough one day and told him she was tired of her. He... still isn't talking to us. Oh well.
Good points. At the HS reunions, the guys who bullied me in grade school had grown up, grown beyond that attitude. I'd grown beyond caring what bullies do. We actually got along all of a sudden!
My recent ex, I will never forgive her or get over the way she treated me and how the relationship ended. She lied to me, used me, and is pretty much is the biggest fucking loser ever.
Ya know, the bully talk reminds of some bullying I did. Sort of a reaction to BEING bullied, when I found someone "weaker" than me, I joined in. Fat kid in gym, who we all just said "You're fat!" to every chance we got. I mean, constantly. I should have known better, but I was 13 or 14. nobody who's 13 or 14 knows better. I ran into him years later. He was slim, in shape, and a fireman. I said "hi!" and he completely ignored me. And rightly so. There's one of the big regrets of my life - treating him like bullies treated me.
